Preacher finds personal revival through God’s triumph over adversity

Dusty Marshall learned two important lessons during his “Revive This Nation” (RTN) preaching assignment this past spring break. First, when Satan is up to something, God is up to something greater. Second, expect the unexpected, and be prepared to just let God do His work.

Marshall, a Master of Divinity student at Southwestern Seminary, encountered multiple hardships before and during his revival experience. But despite the devil’s apparent attempts to distract him from his God-given task, Marshall persevered and ultimately saw God do amazing things.

Marshall’s journey began with a rough start. On his way to the airport with an Uber driver, someone threw rancid milk and coffee on the car’s windshield. The driver said she had never experienced such a thing in her three years with Uber.

When he arrived at the airport, Marshall was directed to the wrong gate, a mistake he noticed almost too late. Fortunately, he did manage to make his flight, arriving at the correct gate just as boarding had begun.

On the flight, the person sitting next to Marshall put headphones on and went to sleep. Realizing the door was closed to a Gospel conversation, Marshall decided to rest as well. Halfway through the flight, he was awakened when his seatmate grabbed the bag in front of her and “emptied the contents of her stomach inside of that bag.”

Upon landing at his destination in Ohio, Marshall shared these experiences with the pastor of the church at which he had been assigned to preach, and they laughed and prayed while waiting for Marshall’s luggage. His luggage, however, was not to be found.

The help desk informed Marshall that his luggage was on another flight that would be arriving in three hours. As the two waited for this second flight, Marshall received a phone call from his wife. This call would prove that the hardships Marshall would continue to face that week were about to take a darker turn.

Marshall’s wife informed him that she was losing her job—the job that had been helping them pay for Marshall’s school as well as “make ends meet.” The pastor encouraged Marshall to return home to be with his wife, but after being assured that Marshall’s friends and neighbors were taking care of his wife back home, he decided to stay the course and preach the revival as he had intended. He trusted that God could still work in spite of the difficulties.

But following Marshall’s first sermon the following morning, no one responded to his invitation. Then, that evening, the pastor did not show up at the service. The pastor’s wife informed Marshall that he had fallen ill. Despite the pastor’s absence, the service proceeded, and Marshall preached his second sermon. Still, no one responded to his invitation.

The following morning, Marshall learned that the pastor had been taken to the ER late the previous night, returning home at 3 a.m. with a diagnosis of pneumonia. “What else could possibly go wrong?” Marshall thought to himself. “How could all of these things possibly happen?”

That night, the pastor mustered enough strength to attend the service, and Marshall preached his third of five sermons. For the third time in a row, no one responded.

Marshall admits he was “a little discouraged” at that point. “All I know is that I can rely on God and I can pray, I can research the Word, and we can go out and do what we can,” he thought.

On Tuesday evening, during the penultimate service of the revival, this reliance upon the Lord through such adverse circumstances was rewarded in a tangible way. In response to Marshall’s invitation at the end of his sermon, a young man named Kevin answered a call to ministry.

“He believes God has placed on his heart that he’s meant to go into ministry, and he’s meant to serve God,” Marshall says. “At that moment, I was pumped. I didn’t care that I was in the middle of nowhere; I didn’t care that all of those bad things had happened. God had moved in a young man’s life, and he knew that he was supposed to serve Him.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else greater than that,” Marshall says. “I could leave a happy man knowing that God had used me and blessed me to have that opportunity.”

But God was not done working in that Ohio church. On Wednesday night, following Marshall’s final sermon, six people came forward, admitted their need to be cleansed from their sin, and rededicated their lives to Christ. They further committed to reach their city, which, though difficult to reach, is not unreachable when God’s power and sovereignty are kept in view.

Though it took longer to see the fruit than Marshall had anticipated, God clearly touched the members of that congregation. The trials of a rough car ride, a wrong gate, a sleepless flight, lost luggage, a lost job, and a serious illness had not overcome God’s higher purpose of drawing people to Himself. “All of this stuff happened,” Marshall says, “and in the end, we watched God’s people respond to His Word.”

“I thought I was going to go out and God was going to use me to reach those people,” Marshall says of his RTN assignment. “And in the end, with us losing our pay, that church stepped up and paid us exactly what my paycheck would have been without me ever asking for it. I watched people love on me and love on my wife in ways I would have never imagined.

“So if you ever have an opportunity to preach the Word and reach the world, I want to encourage you: take that opportunity. Because it may be revival in you that happens, that you never thought possible.”